Jennifer's Employment Resources Page

This page is loosely connected to my web site on leaving academic physics. There, you can find specific information about my experiences as a physicists working outside of the academic world. Here, I have collected some employment resources that are a bit less specific.

---

Employment-Related Print Resources

General Employment

A general favorite classic career change book is What Color is Your Parachute, which also apparently has lots of advice on how to go about searching for jobs (I can't say for sure, since I have never really read it, but lots of people have gotten help from it). It's updated every year, and should be available in just about any bookstore that carries business or career books.

Personally, I'd recommend a book called Making a Living While Making a Difference, by Melissa Everett, published by Bantam in 1995. It's not a how-to manual on how to find a job, but what it does have is a lot of soul-searching exercises that I found very useful in figuring out what I wanted to do, for whom, under what conditions, and most importantly why, at several stages in my own career so far.

There are also many many books on specific aspects of job searching, such as writing resumes and cover letters, interviewing, and negotiating job offers. Your university career center will also have good resources, and career counselors to give extra guidance.

Specific Areas

For teaching English as a Second Language, there is apparently a journal called the EFL Teachers Weekly which comes highly recommended.

---

Employment Web Resources

You may also want to check out my page on how to get a job outside of physics, which has information on how to write resumes, find employers, interview, and the like -- somewhat oriented towards a scientist transitioning to an alternate career.

General Job Listings:

• Monster, general jobs
• Craig's List, classifieds for jobs, items for sale, events, etc.
• Indeed, a new job listing site that tries to have all job listings from the Internet, combining newspapers, company job boards, and other sources
• Idealist, a non-profit volunteer, internship, and job searching site, world-wide
• This article from Career Journal lists many places to search for jobs in specific industries (i.e. niche job boards).
• Contract Job Hunter, a clearinghouse for contract jobs (off-shoot of the print magazine Contract Employment Weekly), which also has a pretty comprehensive list of recruiting firms. Note that most recruiting firms do both contract and permanent placements, so this could be a good resource even if you are more interested in a permanent job.

Physics and post-academic job resources:

• My pages on leaving academic physics
• Chronicle of Higher Education, academic job listings
• AIP Physics Jobs Page
• Physics Web Jobs Page
• Mark Johnson's "Sellout" site
• PhDs site
• Antonella Romano's list of links related to science, security, and disarmament
• Articles on academic-types getting out of academia: Chronicle of Higher Education -- main article, Chronicle of Higher Education -- sidebar listing sites, Chronicle of Higher Education archive of past advice, and Vault.com article

English as a Second Language teaching:

• National Clearinghouse for ESL Literacy Education (NCLE) Website
• National Institute for Literacy
• Teachers of English as a Second Language

Other Resources:

• An excellent set of articles on different careers, including education background required, what the job is like, and expected salary.
• Another site, Career Overview, with similar information.
• An article I wrote on starting a software consulting business
• My page on volunteering

---